


How to Train Your Demon

by Mizmak



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, Short & Sweet, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28112217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizmak/pseuds/Mizmak
Summary: Crowley has trouble abiding by Aziraphale's wishes to not use frivolous miracles, especially when a rabbit invades his lettuce patch.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	How to Train Your Demon

The thing about loving someone, Crowley learned, was that it led to making _compromises_. Which, in the case of loving Aziraphale, meant _letting the Angel have his way_.

Crowley knew all about turmoil. He had spent thousands of years roaming the Earth causing upsets and making mischief in every trouble spot in the wide world, because nobody ever asked him to tempt people in Shangri-bloody-La. No, his little demonic tasks always sent him into the crosshairs of Strife and Contagion. 

So he had experienced an eternal lifetime of turmoil, and he was so done with that. Peace and quiet was all he wanted. 

Which meant learning how to avoid Upsetting the Angel at all costs. 

It was a Tuesday morning. Aziraphale stood in the kitchen of their cottage, holding a dirt-and-twig-filled broom and a dustpan out towards him. He did not look peaceful or quiet. “Crowley, my dear,” he said in strained tones, “do you know what these items are used for?”

What he wanted to say was, _“They’re for chastising your best friend and true love in a patronizing manner?”_

What he _did_ say was, “For sweeping up stuff on the floor?”

Aziraphale tapped one foot meaningfully. Crowley looked down. His friend’s toe was pointing to a pile of cocoa powder on the tiled floor, a pile Crowley dimly recalled spilling late last night. He was _going_ to clean it up, of course. But he’d gotten distracted by a familiar sound out the open kitchen window, as if something small and rabbit like was scuffling around in the garden’s lettuce bed, and he had been doing battle with the rabbits all summer long and damned if he was going to let one win another skirmish.

“There was a rabbit,” he said to the Upset Angel.

“Mm, was there now?”

“Yeah. In the lettuce. I was going to clean up the spilled cocoa after I’d dealt with the little bugger.”

Which he should not have said. Dealing with Rabbits was a touchy topic, ever since the unfortunate incident of the water pistol attack. Really, how was he supposed to know that sudden spurts of harmless water would give an unsuspecting rodent a seizure? Good thing Aziraphale had been there to heal it _post-haste_. 

The foot tapping increased in intensity and force. “May I inquire as to how, exactly, you dealt with the rabbit, my dear?”

In a brief relapse into his former demonic mode, what Crowley almost said was, _“I borrowed the neighbor’s shotgun to frighten the fluffy bastard all the way to my former employer’s domain.”_

Which of course, he would never have done, so instead, he said, “I chased it with that broom you’re holding.” _For nearly an entire bloody hour_.

“Did you now?”

“Um-hm. Think it ran off to Mrs. Whittaker’s place. Eventually. Not harmed in any way. Extremely healthy rabbit.” And certainly a very fast one.

“I am glad to hear it.” 

“Yeah, good. Right. So…er…there was you know, some damage to the broom….”

“So I had noticed.” Aziraphale gazed sadly at the end of the broom, full of all that dirt and all those twigs. “Were you planning on cleaning it at any point last night?”

“Er…uh. Sure.”

“And then, after cleaning the broom, you were going to sweep up this cocoa, is that right?”

Crowley nodded vigorously. “Absolutely.” It was ever so important to Keep Things Clean. Aziraphale liked everything in the whole blasted cottage to be kept in proper order, neat and tidy. Well, except for his library study room—for some reason, the untidy piles of books and papers tottering precariously all round its bookcases and tables and desk were perfectly acceptable.

“And why, would you mind explaining, did neither of those two things happen?”

Crowley sighed. _Do Not Upset the Angel_. “There was a bottle of wine.”

“Was there?”

“Um-hm.” Crowley pointed through the archway to the dining table. “Right there. And when I got done chasing Flopsy and came back inside, I was sort of tired and irritated and it was just sitting there and well, I may have sat down to drink it.”

He had upset the angel.

_“All_ of it?”

“It was just one bottle. Come on, be fair— _you’ve_ drunk massive quantities of wine in one evening before. Loads of times.”

That did not help matters.

“And you forgot all about the mess you made.”

Well, yes, he had. He decided to go for Contrite and Remiss. He lowered his gaze to the floor and shuffled his feet a little. “Sorry.” Crowley glanced upward to gauge Aziraphale’s reaction. “I’ll fix it now.”

“Yes, I believe you will.” As Aziraphale handed over the broom and dustpan, a sad little furrow formed on his brow, and his lips bore a disappointed little pout. “We were making _such_ good progress, my dear.” He made a little _tsk tsk_ sound.

What Crowley wanted to say was, _“Thought you loved me the way I was, not the way you want me to be.”_

What he said was, “Ngk.”

*

As soon as Aziraphale left the kitchen, Crowley snapped his fingers to clean the broom, and then he tried to sweep up the cocoa powder, but it blew about the floor every which way, refusing to go into the dust pan. So he snapped his fingers again, and _poof_ , all gone. Then he puttered around in the kitchen a while longer, pretending he was doing it all without the aid of miracles.

Aziraphale did not approve of using frivolous miracles around their cottage. “We should fully embrace the fact that we have, as I believe that delightful phrase goes, ‘gone natural’,” he had told Crowley when they moved in.

“Gone _native_ , Angel.”

“Ah. Yes. Well, what I meant is, there is much pleasure to be had from doing things slowly, and carefully, in the human manner. It can give one a sense of accomplishment. I think we should curtail our supernatural powers here in our new home. It will be _fun.”_

Crowley put the broom and dustpan away in a cupboard. He strolled outside to sit on a bench by the garden. The vegetable beds were in utter disarray, trampled far more by his own big feet than by Flopsy, Mopsy, or Cottontail. 

He didn’t see why he couldn’t miracle the buggers off to a happy life in a nice wooded area far, far away. But _no_. That wasn’t _allowed_. And somehow, he never managed to do anything surreptitiously—somehow, Aziraphale always _knew_ when he was about to lapse and snap his fingers, as if he had eyes in the back of his head.

Come to think of it, in his true angelic form, he probably _did_.

Crowley sighed. At least it was warm and sunny out here this morning on this late summer day in the South Downs. He basked in it. Truly, he had nothing to complain about. The cottage was comfortable and cozy and they had everything they needed here. The countryside of picturesque hills and valleys was quiet and peaceful, and the nearby village was ever so quaint and charming. 

Once a fortnight or so he got to drive them up to Town, where they spent a few days at the bookshop—now closed to the public and used solely as their private residence. They went to the theatre and dined at their favorite restaurants and took long strolls through St. James’s Park, and stocked up on wine and anything else not readily available in the village.

Aziraphale had taken up cooking, and while his insistence on doing things without frivolous miracles had resulted in a few months of inedible lumps of unrecognizable foods, eventually he had conquered the kitchen and was now contentedly making most of their meals, with an occasional visit to the village café when his talents hit a new snag.

Crowley took care of the garden, often with his friend’s help. He liked it when Aziraphale puttered around there with him, and he hoped he would come out soon to pick a few raspberries for breakfast. 

Peace and quiet. That’s all he craved, and as he basked in the sunshine, Crowley closed his eyes and let out a sigh. If only Aziraphale would stop forcing him into being something he wasn’t—slow, and careful. Yes, he wished to avoid turmoil. That didn’t mean he wanted to avoid every single bit of excitement that could possibly occur, and it didn’t mean tediously plugging away at life in the human manner. They _weren’t_ human.

He heard footsteps on the path. Crowley opened his eyes as Aziraphale sat down beside him, holding two mugs of tea. He handed one over.

Crowley took a sip of the warm, soothing liquid, and sighed. “Thanks, Angel.”

“I believe I may have been a tad harsh earlier.”

“Nah. It’s fine.”

“It belatedly occurred to me to wonder why you had been trying to make cocoa late last night.”

“Ah.” Crowley smiled. “Might have had something to do with _you_.”

“Yes. When I returned to the kitchen to make tea, I noticed there were two mugs sitting on the work top next to the cocoa tin. You were planning to share the cocoa with me.”

“Yup.” Aziraphale had been reading late in his study last night, and Crowley had wanted to join him, with cocoa in hand. “Sorry I messed it up. If I hadn’t been distracted by that rabbit—well, that was just the start of my mistakes.” He sighed. “And you keep telling me not to use frivolous miracles, so I tried not to, and that just made everything worse.”

Aziraphale lay a hand on his thigh. “It isn’t truly your forte, is it—doing things without miracles?”

Crowley shook his head.

“You used one to clean the broom, and to clean up the cocoa.”

“Yup.” _Eyes in the back of his head_.

“Ah, well.” Aziraphale drank his tea. “It simply isn’t _you_ , is it?”

Was his friend finally seeing the light? “Not really. I’ve been trying, I really have. I just can’t see the point, though. It’s too much time spent on the dull stuff when there’s better things to do.”

“Can you explain that to me, my dear? Because I don’t find those tasks dull at all.”

“You’ve always been slow and careful, Angel. It’s your nature not to rush about like I do.” Crowley considered for a while, sipping at his tea, until he came up with an example.

“Take driving my car,” he said. “The whole _fun_ in driving is the part where you barrel down the motorway at top speed, not the part where you have to stop at petrol stations to fill the tank.” Aziraphale had been making him do that. “Or take the garden—the fun part is planting and pruning and harvesting, not laboriously picking slugs off the romaine.”

He took Aziraphale’s hand in his. “I don’t care about the boring bits of life. I want to speed past them with a snap of my fingers in order to reach the _good_ bits.”

“Ah, I see.” Aziraphale leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Whereas I think the boring bits are just as exciting as the good bits.”

“Yup.”

“I’ve been trying to change you too much, I fear.”

Crowley nodded. “Sorry. Don’t want you to be unhappy.”

“I’m not. I fell in love with you the way you _were_ —and you were rather exciting, all in all. Sometimes _too_ exciting, I admit.”

_You go too fast for me…_ “Yeah, I get that. You like the flame, but you don’t want to get burned.”

“Precisely.” Aziraphale smiled. “Perhaps it is time for me to stop forcing you into my own ways.”

Crowley suddenly had a brilliant notion. “How about a quota?”

“Hm? A what?”

“Give me a quota of miracles per day. I could live with that.”

“That sounds like a good compromise. How many would you like?”

“A million.” Crowley grinned.

“Three,” Aziraphale replied.

“A thousand.”

“Five.”

“A hundred.”

“A dozen should be far more than sufficient, my dear.”

Well, truth to tell, ten would have suited him fine. “Good.”

Aziraphale looked over the garden then, and said, “The vegetable beds look atrocious.”

Crowley snapped his fingers. The wilted, mangled leaves returned to their pristine, pre-rabbit chase form. “One down, eleven to go.”

“I’ll just go pick a few raspberries for breakfast. I am making waffles.”

“Mmm.” He liked Aziraphale’s waffles. “Perfect.”

“The old-fashioned way, of course.” Aziraphale rose, and set his tea mug on the bench. “Would you take that inside for me, please?” He strolled off towards the raspberry bed.

Crowley let out a huge sigh of relief. The angel was no longer upset. Peace reigned once more. And he had eleven miracles left for today…hm.

He wondered how many wild rabbits there were in the neighborhood, and whether they would enjoy an unexpected trip to a pleasant woodland far, far away.


End file.
